Tatiana Bazzichelli – Networking Art
The Book
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Post Porn in Milan
A series of initiatives on Post Porn organized by the students of the Brera Academy of Fine Art in Milan: Sapessi com’è strano il Postoporno a Milano!
Together with Gaia Novati, I will held a seminar on Indie Porn & Net Porn – Pornography as a subjective and collaborative experience, on April 5 (10.00-18.00) at the Brera Art Academy – and in the night of the same day, after long time The Traveling Porno Karaoke Show (Italian version) will come back at the Social Center Torchiera in Milan (starting: 19.30)!
On Disruptive Art and Business
English version: Tatiana Bazzichelli, Aarhus, May 2010
In 1981, writing about the concept of ‘ethnographic surrealism’, James Clifford referred to Lautreamont’s definition of beauty: “The chance encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella” [1].
James Clifford described the ethnographic attitude as ways of dismantle culture’s hierarchies and holistic truths. Cultural orders are substituted with unusual juxtapositions, decomposition of reality, fragments and unexpected combinations; the objective of research is not really seen in rendering the unfamiliar comprehensible as part of the ethnographic tradition wanted, but in making the familiar strange “by a continuous play of the familiar and the strange, of which ethnography and surrealism are two elements” [2] [3].
Aesthetics that values fragments, and a methodology of revealing evident contradictions without solving them, but rather leaving them open to new interpretations, as a form of cultural criticism and a way to understand contemporary phenomena. This method, showing our present as a collage of incongruities which don’t just resolve in a dialectic of oppositions, give us input to think about future tactical strategies in the field of art and media.
The present essay deals with the concept of social networking and with the development of folksonomies through social media platforms. It reflects on the status of artistic and activist practices in the Web 2.0 analyzing interferences between networking and business. I will start referring to the dialectical perspective ‘Ästhetisierung der Politik – Politisierung der Kunst’ (aesthetization of politics – politicization of art) by Walter Benjamin [4], in the present context used to describe the development of social networks as an aesthetic representation of social commons, and consequently, to analyze possible strategies of artistic and activist interventions in the social media. Another fragment of my analysis shows how the endless cycles of rebellion and transgression coexist with the development of business culture in Western society, breaking the juxtaposition between art as an aesthetic form of collective representation and art as a form of political intervention by a collectivity. I will show how, since the Avant-gardes, critical art and business have had evident signs of interconnection, especially in the frame of the collective representation of the masses. In conclusion, I will develop the concept of The Disruptive Art of Business as a form of artistic intervention within the business field of Web 2.0, where artists and activists, conscious of the pervasive presence of consumer culture in our daily life, react strategically and playfully from within. The essay ends suggesting possible strategies of artistic action, as a result of framing open contradictions without wanting to resolve them through an encompassing synthesis.
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša: NAME Readymade
Janez Janša
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana
Friday Lectures 2011. Dep. Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University
February 18, 14.00-16.00. Det lille Auditorium, IT-huset, Åbogade, Aarhus, DK
Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa 002199616 (Identity Card), Ljubljana, 2007. Courtesy: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša
NAME Readymade
NAME Readymade is a project developed by three Slovenian artists – who all changed their names to Janez Janša in the summer of 2007. It is focused on the acts of changing one’s personal name and the effects of such gesture, opening up a series of questions, from what is real and what is mediated to the questions of identity and political in art. Janša, Janša and Janša turned around the relational scheme between art and life as it was developed in the 20th century, so that their art methods cut deeply into their material lives and the lives of their immediate surrounding.
Produced by: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Hosted by: Tatiana Bazzichelli
Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana
Supported by: DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus Univerity
Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements
Volume two, issue two is out!
Voices of dissent: activists’ engagements in the creation of alternative, autonomous, radical and independent media
Interface Journal
Volume two, issue two of Interface, a peer-reviewed e-journal produced and refereed by social movement practitioners and engaged movement researchers, is now out, on the special theme “Voices of dissent: activists’ engagements in the creation of alternative, autonomous, radical and independent media”.
FULL ISSUE (PDF 5.05 MB)
Interface is open-access (free), global and programmatically multilingual. Our overall aim is to “learn from each other’s struggles”: to develop a dialogue between practitioners and researchers, but also between different social movements, intellectual traditions and national contexts.
http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie
This issue of Interface includes 26 pieces in 4 languages by authors from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Palestine, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, the UK and the US, including:
Theme-related articles: Tina Askanius and Nils Gustafsson, Mainstreaming the alternative: the changing media practices of protest movements
• Patrick McCurdy, Breaking the spiral of silence: the “media debate” within global justice movements. A case study of Dissent! and the Gleneagles G8 summit
• Tatiana Bazzichelli, Towards a critique of social networking: practices of networking in grassroots communities from mail art to the case of Anna Adamolo
• Clemens Apprich, Upload dissident culture: Public Netbase’s intervention into digital and urban space
• Dongwon Jo, Real-time networked media activism in the 2008 Chotbul protest
• Brigitte Geiger and Margit Hauser, Medien der neuen Frauenbewegung in Archiv / Archiving feminist grassroots media
• Margaret Gillan, Class and voice: challenges for grassroots community activists using media in 21st century Ireland.
When Art Goes Disruptive: The A/Moral Dis/Order of Recursive Publics
Paper presented at the Public Interfaces Conference, 12-14 January 2011, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Abstract:
This paper reflects on the notion of recursive publics proposed by Christopher M. Kelty in the book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (2008), analyzing the consequences of disruptive dynamics both in so-called underground artistic networks and in the business context of digital economy.
Public interfaces are contextualized through the analysis of disruptive actions in collaborative networks, showing that the vulnerability of networking dynamics in recursive publics might be an opportunity to create political criticism, while the act of generating a/moral dis/order becomes an art practice.
Although the analysis of geek community as a recursive public sharing social imaginary of openness, and a moral order of freedom, is a valid frame to understand geek culture through a sociological point of view, adopting a dialectical perspective in the analysis of network dynamics might open an opportunity to question the notion of artistic intervention itself. This thread connects multiple identities projects and hacker practices of the last decade with business strategies of today, reflecting on the role of activists and artists in social media. Their interventions are thought as a challenge to generate a critical understanding of contemporary informational power (or info-capitalism), and to imagine possible routes of political and artistic action. Furthermore, this analysis questions the methodology of radical clashes of opposite forces to generate socio-political transformation, proposing more flexible viral actions as relevant responses to the ubiquity of capitalism. The strategy of disruptive innovation as a model of artistic creation becomes a challenge for the re-invention and rewriting of symbolic and expressive codes.
Public Interfaces Conference
Conference and PhD workshops
Image by Les Liens Invisibles
12-14 January 2011
Aarhus University, Denmark
Kasernen, building 1584, rooms 124 & 120
Public Interfaces Conference brings together researchers from Aarhus University, University of Plymouth, and guests to address the broad theme of Public Interfaces as part of ongoing research in Digital Urban Living. It is organized by Center for Digital Urban Living and DARC (Digital Aesthetics Research Centre), Aarhus University in collaboration with Dept. of Aesthetic Studies.
Emerging from DARC’s ongoing research around interface criticism, the aim is to broaden issues to encompass the development of urban interfaces, and the changing concept of the ‘public’. What do we mean by public interface now?
Research questions
Whilst experimentation and developments in the culture of free software reflects emergent and self-organizing public actions, how does this modify our understanding of public interfaces? Can the public interface be used as a useful concept for understanding changing relations between public and private realms within other fields? Does the public interface offer a way of further examining relational aesthetics, the cultural regeneration agenda and public art? Does the public interface provide new understandings of the relationship between creative production and the free market sphere? How does the possible dissolution of the public and private spheres relate to bio politics and contemporary forms of power? Does the public interface suggest new borders or even the dissolution of borders between the public and private, humans and machines, the centre and periphery?
Revealing Hidden Digital Geographies
In the recent article I wrote for the Italian IT portal Punto Informatico, “NetStArt/ I retroscena delle geografie digitali”, I presented the new project of the Italian duo Les Liens Invisibles: R.I.O.T. – Reality Is Out There.
Created for the Share Festival in Turin and presented during an outdoor workshop for the first time, the work “R.I.O.T. / Reality Is Out There” (here the website) is based on the concept of “augmented reality”. Through the use of smart phones in the urban landscape it is possible to access a parallel infosphere, and as Les Liens Invisibles point out, re-appropriate the public space. The various virtual data and geo-coded levels visible using smart phones become a geography to discover and reveal, but also an opportunity to invade and decompose consciously – and ironically – the everyday life. As stated in the website of the Share Festival, “the inspiration of the new Les Liens Invisibles project is the theme of Share Festival 2010: the error / smart mistakes, which the team plays creating an alteration of reality with the help of these technologies“. The workshop developed through a collective walk in the city of Turin, discovering the installations hidden in the virtual landscape (see the map).
SMART MISTAKES, or BUSINESS AS USUAL
Panel hosted by DARC (Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University)
Presenters: Christian Ulrik Andersen (DK), Tatiana Bazzichelli (IT/DK), Geoff Cox (UK/DK), and Les Liens Invisibles (IT).
Share Festival, Turin, Italy. November 3, 2010. Regional Museum of Natural Science, Conference Hall, 2pm.
The panel investigates some of the interconnections between art, activism and business. Presenters examine how artists, rather than refusing the market, are generating cultural Trojan horses — social hacks, or “smart errors” — producing critical interventions from within. As the distinction between production and consumption appears to have collapsed, every interaction in the info-sphere seems to be a business opportunity.
The phrase “creative economy” is a perversion in this line of thinking. Therefore, the creative intersections between business and art become a crucial territory for re-invention and the rewriting of symbolic and cultural codes, generating political actions, attempts of social innovations, but also unexpected consequences and a deep level of irony. Errors or mistakes demonstrate the permeability of systems — that these can be reworked — and more so, that radical innovation requires modification of the prevailing business logic.
We are not suggesting these are new issues — as there are many examples of artists making interventions into the art market and alternatives to commodity exchange — but we aim to discuss some of the recent strategies that have emerged from a deep understanding of the net economy and its markets. Examples derive from software development and net cultures, such as peer production, free culture initiatives, gift economies, extreme sharing networks or open source business models.